Posted
by
samzenpus
on Monday May 30, 2011 @11:30AM
from the not-in-my-garden dept.

Freggy writes "In Belgium, a group of activists calling themselves the Field Liberation Movement has destroyed a field which was being used for a scientific experiment with genetically modified potatoes. In spite of the presence of 60 police officers protecting the field, activists succeeded pulling out the plants and sprayed insecticides over them, ruining the experiment. The goal of the experiment was to test potato plants which are genetically modified to be resistant to potato blight. It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research."

Odd that they don't simply spread their message by not buying these types of food. They find it acceptable to destroy property that does not belong to them, and which probably cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in lost time and research, just to force people to view things their way. I also found the article to be a bit funny regarding these GM crops being 'forced' onto local farmers.

If you don't want to eat that shit, don't buy it, or grow your own disease ridden organic food. If they prove that it's safe, then I have no issues with it. Since this crop was still being studied, apparently they weren't interested in it's safety, but rather in destroying it before that fact was determined.

It's also pretty sad when they announced their plans to do this and the police still failed to do much but slow them down. Pellet guns or water hoses would have seemed to be a good non-lethal solution here.

You can't just "not buy it", or "not grow it". There's a big issue here in the states with Monsanto and their GM crops being cross pollinated into smaller, local farmers fields. Monsanto can go to court, then force the farmers to pay for the right to grow those crops that now contain their gene.

While not 100% relevant in and of itself, it emphasizes how easily cross pollination can occur, and how it's a huge problem to plant a GM crop anywhere near a non-GM crop and keep there from being cross contamination

And that is the crux of that matter, and also anyone wanting to advertise there view above others calls themselves scientists now anyways. So just because they called themselves scientists does not mean that they were actually running scientifically valid experiments.

Most, if not all, GM plants are engineered so that they don't produce pollen. That's why farmers need to buy new seeds every year. This is done in order to prevent flux of engineered material to nature.

No, they are not engineered to not produce pollen.They are engineered to "not fertilize" other plants.So, the effect is: the GM plant produces pollen that is not fertile. That pollen inseminates wild plants. The wild plants are not fertilized by that pollen. So in the long run the wild plants die out.The farmers also have to buy new seed every year, as even the FRUITS of the plants they grow wont seed again.angel'o'sphere

You can't just "not buy it", or "not grow it". There's a big issue here in the states with Monsanto and their GM crops being cross pollinated into smaller, local farmers fields. Monsanto can go to court, then force the farmers to pay for the right to grow those crops that now contain their gene.

The punchline is that you're starting to see the Monsanto seeds growing in the ditches on the side of the road. I'm waiting for an enterprising village or town to call Monsanto up and demand that they remove their "property" from the roads or they'll be charged with littering.

And to all the folks saying "what's the problem?", it's not that Monsanto has made a better plant. It's that by making it a sterile plant, they're trying to corner the market on farming. The way it's always been done is this - farmer p

You're a moron; it's a point that is relevant (to some degree) because the situation in the US would not exist if it were not so easy for GM and non-GM crops to cross pollinate. There's also a big difference between artificial selection and GM; we don't know all the consequences of genetically altering an organism, but we can basically see them when selecting over generations.

No, it's not relevant, the only thing that story is relevant to is that the US courts again prove that they were completely disconnected from reality and patent/copyright laws in general need to be fixed.

1) the total number of lawsuit Monsanto has files against farmers is in the low hundreds. (And most of these were for saving patented seeds to replant the next year. Which I still think is an abuse of intellectual property law, but has nothing to do with cross pollination).2) Different plant species have different rates of outcrossing (mating with another plant instead of itself). A corn plant for example, will mate almost entirely with other corn plants and very little with itself. A tomato will mate almost entirely with itself.3) Potato plants are at even less risk of outcrossing because they are propagated clonally. Potatoes from one year are cut up and planted in the ground to grow next year's crop and produce plants genetically identical to their single parent. No mating = no cross pollination.

In conclusion it seems likely you have not taken a course in biology since high school (which you likely slept through) and despite clearly feeling very passionate about the debate on genetic engineering, have not bothered to inform yourself on the issue, despite abundant and diverse sources of information.

"Potato plants are at even less risk of outcrossing because they are propagated clonally"

Not always. I always carry a stock of true potato seed. Guess what caused the blight in the first place? Lack of genetic diversity and natural selection.

Looks like where the poster above slept through biology, you slept through history and critical thinking. You apparently slept through biology as well, as potatoes are nightshades and spread pollen like wildfire with their particularly light and fluffy pollen.

"Odd that they don't simply spread their message by not buying these types of food."

Problem being, at some point there may be no other type of food than these. I'm not 100% against GM foods of any sort but there is a real concern that any cross-breeding(which maybe some consider "forcing" it on them, I'm not sure about that though) will result in an entirely unsafe food supply and I can understand that seeing as how there's that corn that was supposed to be the answer to everything that they're now discovering retains its poisonous attributes even after being cooked. If you realize how much corn is in everything you eat, you realize why some might be concerned to act out like this. Again, I'm not saying it's right or that I agree with either side but there are valid concerns.

Coincidently what we call a potato is a result of centuries of cross pollination. Technically you could say there were never really any non-GM potatoes, since cross-pollination is just an old technique for genetically modifying crops.

Well in Canada consumer groups wanted the government to require genetically modified foods to be labelled as such - so consumers could choose. The government refused. Why? Because people might be scared off and not buy it.

Part of me doesn't like the kind of mob action described in the summary but OTOH if governments are going to choose the well being of corporations over the rights of citizens to know what they are eating... it kind of seems like they are asking for this sort of thing to occur.

Odd that they don't simply spread their message by not buying these types of food.

You are absolutely right. And I support one hundred percent a total obligation for all foods to be precisely labelled with exactly what gen-manipulated foods are used in their production. But for some reason Monsanto and friends really don't like people being able to make that decision.

But actually what you are saying is that in a power struggle between food industry and ordinary people with no power, these ordinary people should only be allowed to use the weakest possible form of protest, while Monsanto can spend 100s of millions to buy politicians.

The law requires that any direct ingredients involving genetically modified food must be labeled as such. It does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals, but that's irrelevant for potatoes.

Europe != the rest of the world. Also your link there states that they don't label any GM feed used for animal production and GM proteins do show up in the animals that are fed the GM feed and those animal food products are sold to the public but not labeled with any warning about GMOs.

I do not think many slashdotters would understand, that world over, resistance to bio engineered and gene modified plants is mostly due to business reasons.Or the "Monsato" model.Most GM food is owned by corporations.They sell you seed, and you grow the plants.Then you need to buy seed again the next year.... and so on.So as local less hardy varieties vanish, the corporation can set its own prices.

Traditionally, farmers buy seed just once, and then keep reusing in normal circumstances.GM model is trying to alter whats being done for many millenia.

Its more difficult than making old world studios embrace the internet.

So around all this, you have a whole slew of conspiracy theorists and wack jobs who basically add fuel to the fire.

So here is the opposition.In countries where farmers are a powerful vote bank(eg India), govt mostly does the GM corp kicking here and there.In the west, I guess, its the activists.

I do not think many slashdotters would understand, that world over, resistance to bio engineered and gene modified plants is mostly due to business reasons.
Or the "Monsato" model.

Agreed, but I'm out of mod points, so I'll add my two cents.

Monsanto don't sell you seeds: they sell you a license to use the seeds you bought for that year; if you didn't use them all then you're SoL. Plus, if some seeds pass their genetic material to your own seeds, they'll want to destroy them.

Sounds to me like some assholes who need to spend a few years in jail with hard criminals.

I don't think we need to be that harsh on the scientists. Maybe just having them clean up the field, promising not to play with GMO crops any more would be enough. Jail time seems a little extreme even for such reckless and arrogant behavior.

If you had read the article (yes, I know, I know...) you would realize that many of the protesters are local farmers. So they probably already worked a few years for local farms. But please don't let facts interfere with your knee-jerk reaction.

It's likely that they're trying to protect the genetic purity of their own crops.

When a GM crop is created, it's patented. Natural pollination will contaminate the genetic purity of the natural crop. Eventually, the local farmers won't be able to keep seed for their own crops because they'll all be contaminated by the GM grown nearby [guardian.co.uk]. This has happened time and time again. Local farmers are raided and shut down because their crops have been contaminated and they're now infringing on the IP of some bio-tech firm.

Additionally, GMO toxins have been detected in the blood of fetuses [dailymail.co.uk], potentially effecting development. The jury is still out on the safety of GMO foods. God has had millions of years to work on this stuff, but we've been at it for only a few years and already a significant amount of commercially available food is GMO. What are the long term consequences? The bio-tech firms don't care what the consequences are...because they're making a buck.

So, for all those calling this "terrorism", you need to take your weenie hat off and man-up. I would liken a GM crop grown nearby to an uncontrolled wildfire. The local farmers who are protesting this are trying to protect their own crops.

I agree that there's a lot of inappropriate FUD surrounding GM products, but there are also very good reasons for people to be concerned. GM products tend to be genetically homogenous, and that is very weak from an evolutionary context. It suggests that a new fungus, virus, insect, or other form of danger may arise which can destroy the entire plant line. Over-dependence on GM plants is a monumental leap backwards in terms of survivability to new threats.

Also GM companies have a pretty shady history and a lot of very dark actions in their past, and I don't trust them to make decisions which are good for anyone in the world other than their stockholders. For example, selling the third world seeds which will grow only sterile plants (removing their ability to be self sufficient). Suing farmers whose plants end up being fertilized with GM products from a neighboring field, and so forth. I trust GM companies to be honest about GM plants and livestock about as much as I trust tobacco companies to be honest about cigarettes in the late 80's and early 90's [youtube.com].

I think there's nowhere near enough regulation over GM products. I don't think any private entity should be allowed to commercially produce sterile plants or livestock, and I think they should be required to provide funding for genetic seed banks to protect against the damage they do to genetic diversity (I think they should not be allowed to run those seed banks themselves). I think there's a lot of value to GM products, but I think there's a lot of potential danger too, and I don't trust any private entity to honestly tell me about the dangers along with the benefits.

To those who haven't been paying attention to the world seed market, this may appear to be an appropriate response. Granted, they hardly did us any favors by taking this path, but their intentions were honorable. Don't Mod me until you have read the rest of this. I have references.

Genetically altered plants have been engineered in such a fashion that future generations of food bearing plants are *sterile* requiring you to *buy new seeds * every year. As in, You can't save a few ears of corn to re-plant next year. You have to rely on the corporation with the patent on the seed to allow you to buy more.

In some countries this is illegal, however precedence has been set where one filed of non-altered plants were rendered sterile by another field of steile-altered-plants and the victim with the non-sterile plants ( to start with ) was sued in court and *lost*.

We have grown accustomed to our freedoms being legislated away but this has dangerous implications on the sustainability our food supply.

Well, considering what has already happened with the round-up ready stuff and all this Monsanto crap, it might be a sad day for scientific research, but it's a good day for the freedom of eating natural veggies. Thanks, but no thanks, we don't want your GMO anymore, we saw what it does. If you want to do research, feel free to do it IN THE LABS, but absolutely NOT IN THE WILD.

GMO when done right might achieve that. The problem is that it's mostly crap like golden rice which wouldn't even be necessary if farmers weren't encouraged to only grow rice. The blindness that it prevents was never a problem when the locals were eating a balanced diet.

Additionally, we have plenty of food as it is, growing more via GMO isn't going to solve our problem. At the moment our main problem is distribution. People aren't starving in parts of Africa because there isn't food, they're starving becaus

Have a look at precisely what happens to all of this spectacular bounty of surplus food we could be using to feed starving people. Pay particular attention at 52:10, where Karl Otrok, Director of Production for Pioneer in Romania, explains how things REALLY are...

"It can be preserved, it could be sent to third countries, to countries that really need it, but it doesn't get sent there. It gets sent back to us, and we've got more than enough to eat...and don't need it at all."

At little later, he explains things a bit more clearly...

"When 100,000 people die of starvation, its said we can't feed them, or is it just that we don't want to feed them? From where does the money come from? From the poor! The rich won't let go of their money, only the poor. That's how it is. And it's the same with food; we let them die so we can live. "

After you get done with that, you can comment on the billions of farm subsidies the US and EU governments pay to industrial farmers, so they can undersell everyone else by two-thirds.

You do not need GMO to save the world of starvation. There is plenty enough food to feed everyone. And if you stop subsiding agriculture in first world countries, you will find remaining starvation problems are due to either shitty infrastructure (i.e. complete disregard by the local authority) or civil war/unrest.

Finding the magic crop to save the world is just another PR line like binging democracy, and the current real life use of GMO are as far from fulfilling that line as you can get.

It seems you didn't hear about the story of that farmer, who unwillingly, had his field infected with GMO, because others around were using it (but not him). Then, enormously-wealthy Monsanto sued the poor farmer for using GMOs without buying the copyright they have on the patented seeds.

Another issue. In France, they don't produce GMO corn, or things stuffed with round-up, because you see, they care a bit for their health, and very strangely, believe that eating herbicide sprayed-so-much veggies might be harmful. But then, producers on the other side of the ocean use (and abuse) of round-up-ready Monsanto seeds, and of course, have better productivity, which leads to cheaper corn. Guess what! French can't compete with Americans, and of course, US thinks it's a WTO violation to ban GMO imports.

Now, on the supermarket, sure, nobody is forcing anyone to buy GMO products. But the issue is that we don't know what is made with GMO products. So even if we have that freedom, we can't exercise it. There was once some trials to put stickers on food that contained GMO, but the lobbies are too powerful, and it didn't work.

There are other examples like that. Hundreds of them. You think people have freedom of not using GMO in their crops? Think again, freedom not what big-seed company wants, and that's not what is happening in many places.

Now, let's take freedom and market appart. Do you think that, for food, the only think that counts is money? Isn't there is something called health that we should care about?

Obviously, you didn't read the whole story. The farmer indeed got accidental Monsanto seeds (that part is true). What happened later, however, is that he used a herbicide on his field and realized "uuuuuu, those plants are still alive" --> collected the seeds from those and used them the next year. That's why he lost the lawsuit - he consciously selected for Roundup resistant plants.

It seems you didn't hear about the story of that farmer, who unwillingly, had his field infected with GMO, because others around were using it (but not him). Then, enormously-wealthy Monsanto sued the poor farmer for using GMOs without buying the copyright they have on the patented seeds.

All claims relating to Roundup Ready canola in Schmeiser's 1997 canola crop were dropped prior to trial and the court only considered the canola in Schmeiser's 1998 fields. Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination. The evidence showed that the level of Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1998 fields was 95-98% (See paragraph 53 of the trial ruling). Evidence was presented indicating that such a level of purity could not occur by accidental means. On the basis of this the court found that Schmeiser had either known "or ought to have known" that he had planted Roundup Ready canola in 1998. Given this, the question of whether the canola in his fields in 1997 arrived there accidentally was ruled to be irrelevant. Nonetheless, at trial, Monsanto was able to present evidence sufficient to persuade the Court that Roundup Ready canola had probably not appeared in Schmeiser's 1997 field by such accidental means (paragraph 118). The court said it was persuaded "on the balance of probabilities" (the standard of proof in civil cases, meaning "more probable than not" i.e. strictly greater than 50% probability) that the Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1997 field had not arrived there by any of the accidental means, such as spillage from a truck or pollen travelling on the wind, that Mr. Schmeiser had proposed.

And here's why. The guy didn't have the contaminated plants "accidentally" spread and take over his field. He quite deliberately selected the GM strain, separated it from the rest of his plants, and used it to replant:

He had used Roundup herbicide to clear weeds around power poles and in ditches adjacent to a public road running beside one of his fields, and noticed that some of the canola which had been sprayed had survived. Schmeiser then performed a test by applying Roundup to an additional 3 acres (12,000 m2) to 4 acres (16,000 m2) of the same field. He found that 60% of the canola plants survived. At harvest time, Schmeiser instructed a farmhand to harvest the test field. That seed was stored separately from the rest of the harvest, and used the next year to seed approximately 1,000 acres (4 km) of canola.

One can argue about the merits of gene patents in general, but in this particular case it's not anywhere "poor innocent farmer who couldn't do anything about it".

This research was happening independently of the industry, with public funding. Also, the research was about making the potatoes immune to a common disease, NOT making them immune to a specific brand of herbicide, so I fail to see how this could lead to a Monsanto situation.
Part of the research was also to find out what the environmental impact of GMO is, and you will have to do a field test at some point to scientifically verify this.

Eventually it HAS to be tested in the wild or else you won't ever be able to use the product.

I'd also like to point out that you have been eating GM plants your entire life. Wheat? Hundreds of years of selective growing of only the best stock. Its the same thing it's just been done on a farm instead of in a lab.

Corn? Corn didn't even exist in its current form a thousand years ago, yet it was in its current form before the GMO corps were even founded. I'll bet dollars to doughnuts you eat corn or corn products on a regular basis though don't you?

There need to be restrictions in place on it, but only because they can now make more massive changes to the plant more quickly, not because making changes is in general a bad thing.

Wheat ? Not really that good for you. At least there is nothing wrong with spelt.

Corn ? Natural corn, which exists in many different breeds, making them far less suceptible to a one-size-fits-all bug, would be quite preferrable. But Monsanto is indeed doing its worst to "fix" this, by fighting the proper crops where they exist.

Also, you totally overlook the basic problem. The wheat and corn from 50 years ago is NOT genetically modified in the modern sense of the word, and you know it. The problem with the current craze is that the changes are bigger and faster than before. And that companies make crops that fit their needs, not the needs of those who need to grow stuff. For example, and yes, this is real, they make crops that have weaknesses so that you need to buy more pesticides of the kind they sell. Letting a company be in charge of the raw material for your food is a very bad idea, because they think on a short term for profit basis, and do not care if they mess up the nutritional value of the food or otherwise make things worse for everyone around them.

There is no natural (as in wild) corn anywhere in the world. The wild ancestor of corn, teosinte, can still be found in some places, but you would not have any luck trying to eat its seeds the way you would corn kernels. The beautiful photos illustration the vast genetic diversity of corn are all breeds of corn that have been under artificial selection for thousands of years by farmers from Chile to Canada.

You are correct that "The wheat and corn from 50 years ago is NOT genetically modified in the modern sense of the word" however I believe the point the GP was making is that the changes made by artificial selection were equivalent to, if not greater than, those that are now being produced with genetic modification "in the modern sense of the word."

The genome of B73, a completely un-genetically modified variety of corn, was published back in 2009 and I've had my head buried in it ever since. I've seen broken genes, moved genes, genes missing the sequences that should control when and where they are turned on, even frankenstein genes assembled from the pieces of other genes. All these changes occurred naturally in individual corn plants and are found today in B73 as the result of either artificial or natural selection.

For example, and yes, this is real, they make crops that have weaknesses so that you need to buy more pesticides of the kind they sell.

Citation needed. I know there are GM crops resistant to certain herbicides, but in the absence of those herbicides they grow identically to their unmodified siblings. I don't even know how an effect like the one you describe could be produced. But if you can back it up I will certainly look into it.

I'd also like to point out that you have been eating GM plants your entire life. Wheat? Hundreds of years of selective growing of only the best stock. Its the same thing it's just been done on a farm instead of in a lab.

Do not spread diss-information.
These are not genetically modified, crops, they are artificially-sellected crops.

Realistically, explain to me the difference beyond the time investment. Cross-breeding of different strains of plants, and of similar plants was occurring decades ago, and longer. It's just that now, instead of waiting 18+ plant generations to see results, we see them in 1 generation, allowing faster, better tweaks, and more thorough experimentation for side effects.

People who think there's a fundamental difference between selective breeding and genetic modification make me sick due to their ignorance. The

By that logic evolution itself is impossible since no traits not already present in the population could ever emerge. Selective breeding can also capture and spread new traits that arise by spontaneous mutation (the same way natural selection drives evolution by acting on the same kinds of new variation). Breeders even have ways of speeding up the process called mutagenesis, to increase how frequently new mutations occur. Most are bad, some are good. Dwarf wheat -- which uses fertilizer much more effectively -- and red grapefruits are two example of new traits produced before the era of genetic engineering by using radiation to knock whole chunks of DNA out of chromosomes (a form of mutation that happens in the wild, but at lower rates, given the lower levels of background radiation). Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/28/science/28crop.html?pagewanted=print [nytimes.com]

The safety tests already required of GM crops in the US mean it already costs ~$150 million dollars to get a single new GM trait in a single crop approved for human consumption which is one of the reasons only a handful of giant companies like Monsanto are still in the business of engineering crops. You're right, that's still less than a pharmaceutical company would have to spend to get a drug all the way through regulatory approval, but it's a lot less than the laissez-faire modify whatever they like and release it into the food supply approach many people seem to think is going on.

You say that like there's just one group - I happen to support reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the use of safer nuclear reactor technologies, and the careful use of GMO crops. I'm against patenting GMO life. I'm against assuming all GMO plants are safe for consumption just because their progenitors were safe - that same protein that protects against potato blight may be toxic to more than just the bugs spreading it. On the other hand, it's more than likely less toxic than dumping insecticides on the plants.

There are plenty of people out there who don't simply define themselves as "environmentalists", but look at individual issues and see potential issues that should be mitigated against.

I'm not sure you're helping the cause any by tying it to nuclear power, where there are multiple empirical examples of incidents that occurred despite repeated authoritative assurances of their (theoretical) near-impossibility.

Uh, it's kinda important to test GM foods in realistic conditions, especially when testing "how will this grow in realistic conditions?". I'm sure they took plenty of sensible precautions, like "test it as thoroughly as possible in the lab to make sure it's not dangerous", and "keep it separate and distant from actual crops to prevent genetic transfer". Plus, unless they changed science without telling me, experimental products aren't sold as food after the experiment is over. These particular plants were never going to be eaten.

Plus, what does "Monsanto being evil money-grabbing bastards" have to do with foods not being safe (which seems to be your unstated concern - ignore if I'm picking up on the wrong subtext)? The only two GM foods I can find with actual safety concerns (both triggered allergic reactions) had those problems detected well before even field-study, and were subsequently stopped. I agree that Monsanto is an absolutely evil corporation that should be first against the wall when the revolution comes, but not because they're making and selling unsafe food.

If you file patents on any GM product that has the capacity to cross-contaminate natural organisms with your patented gene thereby giving you the opportunity to sue people for growing crop with your contaminated gene then you should be thrown in the same pool as Monsanto.

If engineering a plant that allows you to douse them with weedkillers killing all weeds while not affecting the plant and you tell the public there will be no repercussions from said practice then superweeds show up on the scene that are resistant to herbicides then you should be thrown in the same pool with Monsanto

If your internal documents show that you knew of many problems but you lied to the public then you should be thrown in the same pool as Monsanto

The question then becomes. What procedures are in place to absolutely 100% prevent these scenarios and many more from happening?

It should be perhaps explained here that there's no such thing as an "ultimate herbicide" -- at least not in the sense of a relatively simple chemical compound. Existing herbicides exploit essentially genetic defects of certain classes of plants. There's nothing fundamentally different between some weed and crop plant that's useful to us. We can't but expect that eventually the weeds will evolve resistant strains. The fact that a plant is to us a weed doesn't make it somehow indelibly marked "bad", subject

The AC's wrong, but right at the same time. The bananas we know aren't the bananas that were originally found. They were selectively bred to the point where there's basically no resemblance to the original plant. And realistically, I don't see a difference between selective breeding and genetic modification beyond the scale of the timeline.

As I explained in an other comment, part of the field test was exactly to find out the environmental impact. You will have to do a field test at some point.
One of the researchers also said that with these potatoes cross pollination does not happen.

I think the submitter of this article is a little unclear on the concept of what companies like Monsanto are trying to do, they are trying to control the food supply, to get a "piece of the action" like a Mafia every time you take a bite of food, and no one who doesn't pay them will have food. They are evil, and this little incident is nothing compared to what should be done to those parasites on humanity. Think of Monsanto and their ilk as the MIAA/RIAA of food.

WTF? Seriously, what are you smoking? I understand that Monsanto and the other seed companies have lots of seed crops which cannot reproduce, but the analogy is quite out there. First off, the seed companies are at the beginning of the chain, not the middle and have little to do with controlling what is grown. Market conditions are the overriding factor in that. (For example check out the increase in cotton planting this year versus previous years due to the high price & low supply of cotton). Second of

Monsanto is all that anyone needs to say these days to show what is most wrong with GM foods. I'm sure all sorts of amazing and magical things can come of GM foods research. But when it is used as a weapon to destroy people and to control something as vital as food for humanity for profit, I have to say NO MORE GM FOOD. Once the problem of commercial exploitation is resolved, then let's revisit the many potential benefits of GM foods.

And before anyone says "profits pay for the research" I will just say I don't care. Find another way that doesn't involve using the results to dominate and drive private farmers out of business and off their land.

I think the Monsanto situation could be easily resolved by making them responsible for not allowing the spread of the pollen, rather than making the private farmers responsible for pollen getting into their area.

The comment "It's a sad day for the freedom of scientific research", misses the complexity of the debate surrounding the inherently political balance between technological advances driven by private interest and the opinion and interest of the larger populace.
A colleague a has published extensively and recently on this very subject, the debate and issue of GGO's in Belgium, these two publications, available from his homepage [ua.ac.be] are highly recommended:

I don't care for the tactics used here, and of course many researchers in this area really are just legitimately working on ways to increase food yields.

On the other hand, there really are plenty of rapacious Monsantos and wannabes out there, who have quite legitimately given the whole thing a bad name. So I do understand the backlash.

Honestly, they'd do a lot better to try and get genetic patents eliminated. That's what causes a great deal of the harm here, whereas those interested in altruism or a reasonable profit don't need them. Unfortunately, those aren't so easy to uproot as a potato.

There may be some controversy over the "evilness" of GM foods. We've done artificial selection for hundreds of years to create the crops we have now. If you look at pictures of wild corn and wild wheat it is unidentifiable to the lay person. In fact most people laugh at the idea of banana seeds, which are basically gone now. I don't have a problem with GM foods that are properly tested.
I do have a problem with the legality. I think GM foods should be a government/international effort. When you hear stories of Monsanto suing farmers which GM strains in their crops from cross contamination or killing off seed banks that gets me riled up.

You can QQ about the moral implications of scientific progress all you like, but you won't be stopping it. Don't like stem cell research because it is an affront to God? Don't like genetics research because it isn't natural? Tough tiddly winks. It takes one researcher spending time on a subject, doing it right, and publishing their results. There is no stopping science.

If you are so terrified of a universe humans understand, shed the hypocrisy. Shut off your computer and all your lights. Refuse antibiotics next time you have a major infection. Reject models like the heliocentric solar system, gravity, electromagnetism, and all the rest.

Having a powerful model for genetics has the potential to outshine all the theories mentioned above in practical use for human life. It will doubtless be necessary if ever we get off our asses and go to the stars.

Bad day for scientific research? No. It's set back of limited duration.Is GM food "bad"? Dunno, jury's still out on that and it really depends which camp you want to listen to.Is the licensing and patenting of GM crops bad? Oh hell yes. The goal of "crop lock-in" is real, demonstrated and rather scary IMO.Would this be a good time to discuss licensing or policies to halt this type of corporate behavior? Definitely. In fact it's so long overdue we may have passed the tipping point five years ago.

I think that this imbroglio underscores the need to limit or do away with gene patents, as there is little chance that the men in white coats (or the ones in black suits that pay them) will stop their tinkering, and I'm not sure that it needs to stop.

If people had that same mindset/fear of the unknown that they did when penicillin and vaccines came out, I think we'd be seriously fucked as a human race.

I seem to remember the potato blight being a terrible thing that killed millions of people in the Irish/Scottish/European famines. And I personally know a family in Newfoundland who were farmers - several years back their potato crop contracted late blight, antifungals didn't help, they lost the crop and ended up bankrupt at the end of it. A blight resistant strain of potatoes seems like a pretty fantastic idea to me.

Besides, the more food that we grow that doesn't need antifungals, pesticides and other "of course they're toxic, they wouldn't work otherwise" chemicals sprayed on it for it to grow, the better. I'd eat a GM vegetable any day over that.

(Mind you, I'm personally against engineering salmon to be 10 times bigger and growing them in offshore fish farms. Grow that shit in an inland fish farm where it's guaranteed that they won't take over and fuck up an ecosystem.)

The argument against GMO is that it's not just a natural selection process aided along by humans who see the end result of those genetics before choosing the next step, it's that we're taking genes and modifying them without knowing the exact changes made. We can make many permutations of the potato via GM, and have no idea what they'll end up as. However, if we go and use the traditional methods, we see exactly what we're getting, and know to a greater extent that there aren't unintended consequences.

Like cats ? We`ve been working on them for centuries, interbreeding them.. Now we have some nice eyes colors with specific forms and `hair colors`, that please the human eyes, but they develop tons of problems later in life. I`d call that unintended consequences.

Nonsense. With 'traditional methods', you still have the chance of spreading a dangerous recessive gene across the entire population, or even a dominant gene that later becomes a disadvantage as the environment changes. There are countless examples of food crops becoming extinct in large regions as a result of this. Take a look at the ancestry of a 'French' grape vine some time...

With GM crops, we are less likely to see that, because we're tweaking smaller numbers of genes at a time.

it's that we're taking genes and modifying them without knowing the exact changes made.

I'd argue just the opposite. With modern genetic engineering methods, we can now know exactly how we're modifying the genome. It's actually the older methods - selective breeding and the use of random mutagens like colchicine - that leave us in the dark about what is actually going on.

yes but through a natural cross-breeding process. Not by using a gene gun to fire a foreign gene from a bacterium into a random place in the genome of a plant and then waiting decades to see what happens. See Monsanto. Do yourself a favor. Just google "The world according to Monsanto" Watch the documentary and see for yourself behind the scenes.

Apparently you haven't heard of things called hybrids. Have you ever eaten a blood orange? How about a grapefruit? Both of those exist because someone intentionally cross-fertilized fruit bearing plants (which for those of you who don't know is the process of inserting genes from one species of plant into another species of plant in order to create a third species of plant with characteristics from both parent species).

Every time I hear someone complaining about how they can't stand GMO's: I ask them if they eat grapefruit.
99.9% of the time the answer is yes, "but only organic grapefruit". to which I laugh and carry on with my life.

It's not as clear-cut as you might imagine. Retrovial infections move gene sequences between unrelated species all of the time, and often the crop that you decide to use in the next generation of selective breeding is going to be the one that had some genes from another species spliced in giving it a genetic advantage.

Then go resurrect some crops from fossils a few thousand years old. Genetic modification through selective breeding has been around for as long as agriculture. Direct modification is the same in kind if not in technique. i.e. instead of breeding Regular Tasty Potatoes in the same field as Hardier Smaller Potatoes for a few years and replanting the ones with the least blight, you instead figure out how the hardier variety are resistant, isolate the genetic sequence(s) responsible for this, splice them into your Tasty Potatoes, and breed those for a while to make sure nothing untoward happens. The crops destroyed were at that latter stage.Personally, I'd rather eat 'GM food' that requires a lower number and quantity of pesticides than other crops of the same cost, especially when 'Organic' food requires a massive increased land-area and other resources to farm (and thus a higher direct sale price). Then there's the GM foods needed to prevent starvation in countries where regular crops just do not provide enough nourishment to sufficiently feed their populations.

This is separate from Monsanto et al's massively dickish moves in attempting to patent genetic sequences and impose ridiculous 'licensing terms' on crops.